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by elabajaba 4 days ago
IceFrog didn't create Dota, he took over maintenance of it from a long line of other people at the time, including Guinsoo (who added Roshan and the recipe system) who worked at Riot (though Icefrog was definitely the best maintainer, Dota was already hugely popular before Icefrog had anything to do with it).

Dota itself wasn't even original, it was based on a StarCraft 1 custom map.
3 comments
weberer 4 days ago
The Starcraft map was called Aeon of Strife.
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CrimsonRain 4 days ago
Dota was popular in its own niche and game was hugely imbalanced. IceFrog took it to somewhere so high above, saying "next level" is understating it.
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lostmsu 3 days ago
That wasn't the point anyway.

There's nothing of significance in LoL vs the original DotA.

Same applies to DotA 2 btw. Valve is making changes for the sake of changes. Now every hero has a talent tree for example. Has the game become better because of that? I don't think so.

I bet if they did A/B when they rolled that update out, not a lot of people would have stayed on the new version.

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ModernMech 3 days ago
As someone who has continuously played DOTA for the last 20+ years, I appreciate Valve keeping the game fresh. Sometimes they make changes that aren't so great, but the game is always evolving so it's fine. Despite that, even after all this time they've still managed to keep the spirit of the original WC3 mod.
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eudamoniac 3 days ago
As someone who continually played LoL, Valorant, and StarCraft 2 for long periods at different phases in life, I appreciate Blizzard keeping SC2 pretty much the same the most. I guess some people like change for the sake of change, but I just want to play and practice a given game. Just like chess and Melee have thrived without updates, I would much prefer my video games to not have frequent changes. I know I'm a minority in this regard. I'll come back to SC2 and counterstrike, but I'll never come back to LoL or Valorant because it's no longer the game I was playing.
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ModernMech 3 days ago
But DOTA in particular, it was never just a "given game"; even from DOTA 1 they added heroes and items frequently. Adding heroes and items changes the game balance so it has to be continually rebalanced.
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eudamoniac 3 days ago
Yes, that's one of the reasons why I didn't play it. I probably would have switched over from LoL if it were more static.
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